If you ask River Mill Academy coach Hamilton Perkins to describe his girls’ basketball team, you get a chuckle — after a long pause.

So what gives, coach?

“That’ll be very hard,” Perkins said during a telephone interview Thursday. “I’m not going to call us a bipolar team, but sometimes we play extremely well and other times not so well.”

Of late, the former has been much the case for the second-seeded Jaguars (27-3), who will square off against No. 1 seed Lejeune (26-0) in the NCHSAA 1-A East Regional final Saturday at Crown Arena in Fayetteville.

The winner will advance to the state finals March 16 at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh against the survivor of Saturday’s West Regional final pitting Bishop McGuinness (23-7) against Cherokee (28-2).

River Mill advanced to the regional final with a 64-59 win over top-seeded Riverside (28-2) before the Devilpups downed No. 3 East Columbus 56-47.

“We set our goals one step at a time,” Perkins said. “Our ultimate goal was to qualify for regionals, and we were able to do that. Here we are, and we’re happy to be here.”

The Jaguars are here despite losing one of their top players, 5-foot-5 senior guard Ashley Spivey, to a torn knee ligament in the middle of January. While the loss hurt a team with limited numbers, Perkins said the Jaguars barely missed a beat.

“We have surprised ourselves in the way that we’ve faced adversity,” he said. “Our top shooter went down with an ACL. We went 6-2 in the first 8 games after her injury as we had to kind of reinvent ourselves. So we’ve responded really well recently. So I’m pleased the girls have managed just to keep things together.”

Perkins described Spivey as a “multi-dimensional player” whose loss hurt in a number of areas.

“Everyone realized with her going down everybody was going to have to become more versatile, learn to play multiple positions to fill the void,” he said. “We challenged them to do that. They did it to the point where we are where we are today.”

River Mill is not a big team — in terms of either size or depth.

The Jaguars have only one player at least 5-8 — senior guard Lenaira Ruffin, who had 9 points and 16 rebounds in Tuesday night’s win over Riverside.

And River Mill has only seven players total.

Against Riverside, 5-6 senior guard Daijah Faucette led the way with 27 points on 9-of-19 shooting along with 9 of 15 from the foul line and 10 rebounds.

Asked if Faucette was a key player for the Jaguars, Perkins laughed.

“With only seven players,” he replied, “all seven are key.”

Also in double figures against Riverside was 5-6 sophomore guard Kayla Burns with 10 points while Marla Crawford, a 5-3 senior guard, had 8 points, 7 steals and 4 rebounds.

“We have different options from an offensive standpoint,” Perkins said, “and we try to see how we match up against the other team and go from there.”

As a small team, Perkins said the Jaguars like to run — when they can.

“But we're not always at liberty to dictate the pace of a game,” he said. “A lot of times we’re facing such tremendous challenges that we have to adapt whatever style our opponent is playing.”

Ditto on defense.

“Adaptable,” Perkins said when asked whether his team is primarily a man or zone team. “We adapt to the situation at hand or attempt to.”

And the situation at hand for the Jaguars in the finals is dealing with a Lejeune team that is undefeated and led by senior guard Chatori Major, who scored 36 points while also coming up with 7 steals in beating East Columbus in the regional semifinal.

“They’re undefeated, loaded with confidence,” Perkins said. “They’ve got a scoring machine in Major. In talking and trying to get information on the team, a couple coaches I talked to described her as being able to do everything in the gym except sell popcorn and programs. We know we’re going to have to bring our A+ game.”

Some foes have tried to slow Major down with box-and-one or triangle-and-two defenses, which Perkins said he wasn’t likely to unveil Saturday. He jokingly pointed to another strategy to try to limit Major’s points.

“Somebody suggested perhaps a complete stall. I know Salisbury did that to East Davidson back in 2009 in the Western Regional. But who knows?” Perkins said. “Based on the fact that she appears to be just unstoppable, we probably won’t do anything different for her.”

Perkins said another problem is that Lejeune is not just a one-player team. If that was the case, he added, “let’s let her get her 30 or 35 and stop everybody else.”

“But Lejeune is a well-rounded team,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to be at this point, still playing at this point of the year. We know we’ve got to bring our A-game in order to keep it close.”